


Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny

by Kansas42



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 3x02 Fallout, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Depressed Cisco, Dreams and Nightmares, Eventual Dark Cisco, Gen, Kinda Dark, No Seriously I'm Not Kidding About The Dark, Time Travel Repercussions, blatant Star Wars references, vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8460310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/pseuds/Kansas42
Summary: Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to time travel.Or, Cisco tries to move forward and accidentally vibes a devastating glimpse into The Timeline That Was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from The Empire Strikes Back.
> 
> Also, this story takes place sometime after 3x02, and blatantly ignores anything after that. (I never write fast enough.) Spoilers for anything up till 3x02. And I'm not exactly clear on when Dante dies in the Flashpoint timeline, so I'm basically just making it up to suit my own story. Please ignore the pesky timeline discrepancies behind the curtain?

Cisco worries, more than the others—or maybe he just worries about different things. Caitlin’s scared that she’ll be alone forever, that she isn’t meant to find happiness, or love. Harry worries about Jesse, and then Jesse, and then Jesse some more. Barry is mostly afraid that he won’t be able to defeat whatever meta-of-the-week he’s up against, but that’s pretty easily fixable: once someone says the magic words—I believe in you—Barry can pretty much do anything. He’s basically the losing football team at halftime in every sports movie Cisco’s ever been forced to watch.

Cisco worries about duality, about the consequences of power, about the Light Side and the Dark Side and how easy it is to fall.

No one else takes it seriously, the fear of becoming your own evil doppelganger. Harry is—big shock here—completely impatient with the whole idea. (“How many times do I have to tell you, Ramon? You aren’t him. He isn’t you. It wouldn’t matter if all the Cisco Ramons in all the Earths were evil. They. Aren’t. You. Obsess about something worthwhile for a change.”) Caitlin, meanwhile, plays her little dirty rotten trick, pretending to turn into Killer Frost, which, STILL NOT COOL, Caitlin. And Barry outright laughs at Cisco for thinking he could ever become Darth Vader, swears that he and the others would never let that happen because they’re not just his friends; they’re his family.

But Cisco knows they’re all wrong. Having an evil doppelganger isn’t like having an evil twin. They don’t just look like you; they _are_ you, only they made different choices along the way, choices you could have made, choices you could still make. And they’re not all easy choices, like avoiding bad hairstyles and guyliner. Anyone can become a villain, no matter if they have a family or not, no matter if they’re loved or not.

Besides, who even knows if this Barry actually said anything like that? Maybe this Barry never promised to be there. Maybe this Barry isn’t his family at all.

#

Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to time travel.

In his healthier, more mature, Better Person moments, Cisco can acknowledge that time travel is a pretty crappy solution to life’s problems and is better used for whole world-ending catastrophes where billions and billions of lives are on the line, not just one life--even if that one life happens to be his one and only brother, who he spent most of his life alternately idolizing and resenting, and who never got to hear the words “I love you” and “I’m sorry” and “I want things to change.” Cisco wants Dante back, more than anything, but Barry is right about the consequences: what if he made a world where Dante lived but Caitlin died? What if he created a world where Dante lived but Zoom was never defeated? Cisco could save his brother but destroy the world, destroy every world, every other version of the brother he had so desperately wanted to hold onto. Cisco had told Barry that he didn’t care, but in his Better Person moments, he does; of course he does.

In his lesser moments—

Barry stares at the picture of Sam Whitney, the current meta-of-the-week who can unleash mega psionic blasts to anyone who comes within 25 feet of him. (They’re just calling him the Brain Freeze Bandit, because Caitlin came up with the name, and even after a couple of years of doing this, she is still remarkably terrible at naming the bad guys. Of course, that’s supposed to be Cisco’s gig, but he just doesn’t have the energy for it today; energy, he’s discovered, is sort of like a noob meta’s power: some days you’ve got it, other days, not so much.) “I just don’t see how someone can be so reckless with other people’s lives,” Barry says, without a trace of irony. Like, not even an iota of irony.

“Yeah,” Cisco says. “That’s definitely something you wouldn’t know about for sure.”

“Cisco . . .” Caitlin says.

Barry makes some sort of aborted halfway gesture, like he can’t decide whether he should throw his arms up in disgust or just helplessly shrug. “I don’t know how many more times I can apologize, man. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Cisco shakes his head. “And you’ve cared about what I’ve wanted when, exactly?”

“Cisco,” Caitlin says a bit firmer, reaching out to him. 

He shrugs her off and tries to say something—he really isn’t sure what. An apology, or maybe an insult, a devastating emotional gut punch—but in the end, he doesn’t have the energy for that, either, to condemn, to forgive, or ask for forgiveness. It all sounds so exhausting. Everything sounds exhausting.

Eventually, he gives up and walks away from both of them, because all he really wants to do, all he really ever wants to do, is sleep.

#

Cisco dreams of Dante.

Sometimes they’re kids again, back when they told each other everything, back before their parents’ obsession with Dante’s talent wedged an impenetrable wall between them. Sometimes Dante’s dying in his arms, even though Cisco wasn’t anywhere near the accident, even though he was at a concert that Caitlin dragged him to while Dante died on a dark road, all alone.

Lately, Cisco’s been dreaming something else: he dreams that they’re at Star Labs together. Cisco walks into the room where Dante’s waiting, and Dante’s pretty upset, teary even. Cisco’s upset, too, and hugs Dante for all his worth, saying the words that he never got to say in real life: “I want things to change. You’re my brother.”

And Dante just hugs him back and says, “Okay. Okay.” And it is okay, somehow. Cisco knows it is, or it will be, anyway, which is near enough.

But then it’s over, and Cisco wakes up, gasping, one hand over his heart. His reaction shouldn’t be so violent—it wasn’t a scary dream—but these new nightmares always leave him breathless and in tears. Somehow, these ones are different. Somehow, these ones always hurt the most.

#

Time travel leads to suffering. Suffering leads to anger. Anger leads to a time causality loop, and drinking. Like WAY too much drinking.

He’s dealing with the hangover on his couch—he can’t face his bed right now—when he hears the doorbell and thinks, _I created Barry’s suit. I created the cold gun. How in the name of Gene Roddenberry have I not created a remote for my front door_? 

Groaning, he gets to his feet, trying to prepare himself for one of Caitlin’s highly logical and sharply pitched motivational speeches about forgiveness and acceptance and healing. Instead, Barry is standing outside with his patented Wounded Puppy Face.

Cisco closes his eyes. “Full disclosure, man: this gets too sappy, and I might throw up on you.”

He shuffles back to the couch, Barry following with no small amount of hesitation. He sits down on a chair and then immediately gets back up, a whirlwind of speed and electricity, and is that—yup, Barry has used his Speed Force powers to make a cup of sugar with a pinch of coffee, just the way Cisco likes it. 

Normally. As always, Barry means well . . . but Cisco wasn’t really joking before. The smell of the coffee is actually turning his stomach. 

Cisco sets the cup down on the table. “Listen—“

“No,” Barry says. “No, look, man, I know you’re mad at me—“

Cisco startles, because those words sound eerily familiar, like something important he’s heard before . . . but he can’t track it down right now, not with Barry still rambling at 110% earnestness.

“—and if I could do anything, anything to fix what I did, I’d—“

“Dude, stop. You’re making my head spin.” Again, Cisco’s not being wholly figurative; Barry never seems to really stop moving, even when he’s sitting down, and Cisco had one too many Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters last night to deal with that right now. “Look, yesterday? I was out of line. No, it’s true. You were like, you were . . . _wow_ , I am too hung over to even come up with a good pop culture reference. I’m, like, losing all my nerd cred right now.”

“Cisco . . .”

“I’m saying I know this isn’t easy for you. I get that, and I’m sorry, and I wanna just hug it out, embrace the Moral of the Week, and move past all this, but Barry . . . I don’t know if I can do that.”

Barry’s smile is watery. “Maybe we could try?” he asks.

And, before Cisco can respond, Barry hugs him.

It’s a good hug, and Cisco closes his eyes. _There’s a way forward from this_ , he thinks. _I say something funny like ‘I told you I’d puke if this got too sappy,’ and then Barry laughs, and we keep trying to move forward, faking it until we make it, until we recover what we lost_. It could work, and he wants it to work; he misses his best friend, and he wants to stop succumbing to all the lesser moments. He wants to be a better person; he wants to be a Light Side Jedi all the way--

And then Barry says, “I want things to change. You’re like my brother.”

\--And Cisco is suddenly somewhere else.

#

 _He’s in the doorway, mouth already open, trying to figure out what to say because Dante’s alive--which of COURSE he’s alive; you don’t die when your doppelganger does, otherwise, Cisco would be toast, not to mention Joe and Caitlin and Harry, but . . . seeing Rupture like that, seeing Dante’s face and thinking “it could have been him,” and “I’d never have told him, ”and “I don’t want this to be the way we turn out, I have to do something, I have to FIX this . . ._ ”

 _But Dante’s already talking. “Did you see this?” he asks, pointing to the news report, but of course Cisco has seen it; it’s written all over his face. “That’s what you left to go do, isn’t it?” Dante asks, standing. “Look, man, I know you’re mad at me, and we haven’t been close in a long time—_ “

 _But by now Cisco’s realized he doesn’t need to give some Big Inspirational Speech, and he doesn’t need to hear Dante apologize, either. Cisco just crosses the room and hugs him. “I want things to change,” he says simply, squeezing Dante’s shoulder. “You’re my brother_.”

 _And Dante just hugs him tighter and quietly says. “Okay. Okay—_ “

 _And someone else is shaking him, someone’s saying_ —

#

“—you back with me, buddy? Cisco? What did you see?”

Cisco stares at him.

It’s the dream he’s been having, only . . . only it was never a dream at all, and he should’ve known better; it felt too different, too real. He should have known better, but he hadn’t, because that knowledge hurt too much, because he hadn’t wanted to know.

Because it meant that . . . it meant . . .

Cisco didn’t see Rupture die. In this timeline, anyway, Cisco didn’t actually see Rupture’s body, and it was a different thing, knowing your brother’s evil doppelganger was dead and actually staring at his corpse. Cisco had wanted to fix things, but not with the same sense of urgency, not with a need to change before it was too late. He didn’t go back and hug Dante, and Dante never understood the true depth of Cisco’s involvement with The Flash, and later, when Caitlin told Cisco that she had a few tickets to a piano concerto that he knew Dante would have liked, Cisco thought about asking Dante to come along . . . but it would be awkward and frustrating and anyway, there would be time to patch things up later, wouldn’t there? They had all the time in the world.

But they didn’t, not in this world. Not in this timeline. 

But in Barry’s timeline—

“Cisco?”

Cisco blinks. “I don’t know,” he says, even though he does know, even though he can already feel that knowledge inside him, crushing his heart . . . but his heart always gets crushed eventually, doesn’t it? Every version of him, every timeline . . . the only thing that changes is the person who’s breaking it. And today it’s his best friend, who said Cisco was like his family, like his brother . . . but he wasn’t and he never would be, because Barry ran away from him for his real family, because he sacrificed Cisco’s family for his own.

Dante isn’t alive, not in this timeline, but he had been, he was . . . 

. . . until Barry Allen changed history. Until Barry Allen killed him.

Time travel leads to anger. Time travel leads to hate. Time travel leads to suffering.

“I don’t know what it was,” Cisco says, and his voice sounds very far away. “But whatever it was, it was bad, man. It was really bad.”

Time travel leads to revenge.

#

In the end, it’s so much easier than Cisco ever imagined.

It’s a week after he learned the truth. They’re in the Cortex, him and Harry and Caitlin. Barry is downtown, facing the Brain Freeze Bandit, and it’s looking bad because of course it is; it’s halftime, baby, and Barry’s saying _Guys, it hurts so much. I don’t know if I can do this_.

Joe and Iris aren’t here, so it’s up to Harry to open his mouth and give the Speech—

\--Only Cisco says, “You’re right, Barry. You can’t.”

Harry and Caitlin stare at him, probably thinking that they heard him wrong, or it’s some kind of joke, some reverse psychology tactic. 

Cisco says, “You want to know what I saw last week, Barry? I saw you. I saw you fail. I saw how every choice you make is the wrong one, how everything you do leaves someone hurt, or dead. I saw what happened to Dante. He was alive. He was _alive_.”

Caitlin gasps, and Harry tries to pull Cisco away, and Barry . . . Cisco can hear Barry crying. He should care. He should feel guilty. He should feel sorrow or grief, pity or remorse.

But that’s all been crushed right out of him.

Cisco says, “I see _you_ , Barry Allen. And I don’t believe in you at all.”

He turns then, and leaves the Cortex. Harry’s frantically talking to Barry, and Caitlin’s shouting Cisco’s name, but he doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t look back, just thinks _I'm pretty sure this is how supervillains are born_.

But he just doesn’t have the energy, or the heart, to care.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Just so you know, the original plan for this story was considerably less dark. My usual MO is angst, angst, and hugs! This . . . went somewhere else. Sorry?


End file.
